Wednesday, February 28, 2007 -- 10:18 AM
Today it snowed. Kind of strange for this part of the world. Anyways, by the time I hopped off the bus in Seattle it was raining and it felt pretty good. I get a cup of coffee and then head into this old brick building into a very quaint reading room where I read and mess about for awhile before class. That's where I am now.
I've been reading this novel, No Longer at Ease, about Nigeria and omigod colonialism and whatnot, and the writing is so good and so meloncholy that it reminds me of what I used to read. The story is rubbish but the writing is quite good, and reading like that makes me think more. It makes me feel pretty good to be in that mindset again, and I'm realizing that when I'm not reading I have little desire to write. This might seem obvious, and I always know that it's true but it only really hits me when I start reading again. I used to read so much more than I do now. Actually, that isn't really true. I used to read a lot more of this sort of thing. Now all I read are dry academic papers, and all I write are dry academic papers, and as happy as I am with how well that's going for me (super!), it does change who I am in that it makes a profound difference on my outlook. I spend much less time thinking creatively and taking an interest in the immediate world around me. Enough! Enough I say (again)!
Less TV from now on, I swear. Oh, and I gave up smoking for Lent.
Monday, February 05, 2007 -- 11:33 PM
Re-evaluation
One thing that reading Marx will do to you, if nothing else, is to make you reevaluate your life, specifically what makes it meaningful. By this I do not mean that I consider my life meaningless, because I do. What I am looking at is the added meaning that my life might posses if certain things were remedied. What I am looking at is a deficit of meaning, the same deficit that Marx sees as a result of capitalism, applied to my own life. Instead of capitalism, however, I see routines as contributing to the deficit. Of course, all of this is very obscure, so let me present an example. I have certain routines that I fall into and that I find very hard to dislocate. I get up and leave the house at the same time every day, catch the same buses, and when I get to school, I go to the same coffee shop and order, for the most part, the same thing. I go to class, sitting in the same spot every day, and then when class is out I sit in the same spot at the same library and study. I catch the same bus home every day, and this is where my habitual routine ends, since my evening activities are generally different. I believe that it is for this reason – the fact that the evening offers a variation from the rest of my day – that it is when I feel most fulfilled, and in a way self-perpetuates the monotony of the rest of my day. Since I have a time when my life is different, I can feel like I am working towards that, instead of gaining any personal fulfillment from whatever I am currently doing in my life at school.
It is this rote lifestyle that I believe directly affects my academic life as well. I take notes in class, writing down what the teacher says, and then, come exam or paper, regurgitating the information as it was presented, without creative analysis or interpretation. It is the same as going to the cafe and ordering the same drink, even if I feel like drinking something else, that dumbs down the senses. Eventually I will only feel like drinking one drink, because that's the only drink I order and do not even stop to consider how I truly feel about it, or if my feelings might have changed, which they do occasionally. The meaning comes from the action performed over and over again – custom, one could say – rather than from any original thought or feeling. Coming back to Marx, my studies and academic pursuits hold no use-value for me, since the end is satisfying, not my own intellectual thought, but academic requirements. This directly contradicts the reasons that I first decided to attend university, and directly compromises the legitimacy that I attach to scholarly pursuits. In short, I want to be able to benefit personally from my studies and generate some use-value from them, rather than simply getting through them for exchange-value, or material benefit.
